229 pointsby intunderflow6 hours ago65 comments
  • jdormit4 hours ago
    Wow. I have never worked on any cryptocurrency projects and never intend to, but I will certainly be staying very far away from Codeberg because of this.

    There are some levels of censorship that make sense for a code forge - “you can’t do crimes on our servers”, “you can’t host malware on our servers”, etc. But inflicting a subjective moral judgement on an entire category of software sends the message that this isn’t a safe place to host any of your repositories. If the moral landscape shifts in the future, how can you be sure your project won’t be next on the chopping block?

    What a terrible precedent to set.

    • conartist64 hours ago
      They banned cypto projects two weeks ago. Today they banned vibecoded projects. https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-...
      • simonw2 hours ago
        I'm not crazy about this:

        > We acknowledge that many developers have started to embrace LLMs as a tool in their workflows. Some use it extensively and rarely code by hand, others delegate only specific tasks to it. We understand that you want to know how the change affects your projects going forward. While we can't give an easy answer, we'll share some remarks that should address most of the concerns raised in the discussion.

        Where terms and conditions are concerned I really do value "easy answers".

        • matheusmoreira2 hours ago
          They have no idea what "slop" is. They don't want to have to define it with any precision. Ironically, these rules will be enforced based on vibes.
          • andai18 minutes ago
            I was thinking recently about Dijkstra's position on proving the correctness of your programs, and how by his standards, we've all been going by vibes long before AI.
          • close0430 minutes ago
            Maybe they use the definition from the HN guidelines [0]:

            > Don't post generated text or AI-edited text. HN is for conversation between humans.

            Does this change your view of HN? Of Codeberg? Of vibe enforced rules?

            [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

          • what2 hours ago
            They will just put it to user vote, same way all their policy is decided.

            > The second vote was more controversial, but was also accepted with 358 agreements vs 144 disagreements (and 14 abstentions), with a high voter turn-out of around 50% of active members.

            • hparadiz2 hours ago
              Basically a popularity contest. It's high school all over again.
              • DANmodean hour ago
                High School keeps being funded, though.
              • squigzan hour ago
                What do you propose is a better way of deciding things?
                • hparadizan hour ago
                  Sometimes the right move is to do nothing.
                  • squigzan hour ago
                    And sometimes, decisions have to be made.
                • drdaeman39 minutes ago
                  Deliberative democracy is a thing.
            • matheusmoreiraan hour ago
              No thanks. I get enough of that bullshit in my own country.
        • what2 hours ago
          Maybe you shouldn’t use a platform that lets the users vote on policy then?

          > The second vote was more controversial, but was also accepted with 358 agreements vs 144 disagreements (and 14 abstentions), with a high voter turn-out of around 50% of active members.

      • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
        Welp. Looks like I'm never going back there.
        • conartist63 hours ago
          I mean, that's your right, but also they'll get new users too. So much of the internet is drowning in slop that any place that's still brimming with original content will likely see its stock go up, and will tend to attract people who still do original work, creating a virtuous cycle
          • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
            How do you define "slop" ?
            • conartist63 hours ago
              Yeah I don't know. It's impossible to draw a clear line, but the overall effect is not hard to identify. If your work supports a community and creates value, you can reasonably expect the community's support. If your work leeches from a community, you can reasonably expect the community to turn on you.

              To me slop is identifiable by its effect: it is the type of work which leeches value

              • iamnothere3 hours ago
                To me, this all sounds like the kind of fuzzy reasoning and nondescript language that turns communities into popularity contests and backstabbing competitions.

                If Codeberg wants to put a flag up to draw in every programmer with a personality disorder, well that may be their right, but it’s not a good idea.

              • matheusmoreira2 hours ago
                > the overall effect is not hard to identify

                Yes, the effect is it will become a toxic community where your project can be summarily judged and instantly dismissed as slop because there's an AGENTS.md file in the repository or LLM attribution in the commit messages.

                • davkan8 minutes ago
                  AI slop projects, or vibecoded projects, or projects made with heavy llm assistance, or whatever you want to call them are already divisive and the discussions about whether they aught be allowed are already causing strife in many communities.

                  Right or wrong many users are utterly uninterested in said content and wish that their existing communities could continue as they did prior to the onslaught. Naturally, some communities will decide to attempt to moderate in such a way that supports those users desires. As with most necessary moderation of online communities there will be gray areas and judgement calls and drama and abuse. There really isn’t an alternative.

                • conartist62 hours ago
                  ...and? HN is already like that... I'm not here to give people the benefit of the doubt. I'm lookin' for minds at work. At the first sign that no mind is working, I'm gone
      • kajman2 hours ago
        > So while the following use cases are discouraged (similar to private repositories), they are likely to be tolerated in practice:

        > Side projects and experiments with little resource usage > Specific tools and custom scripts that would be unlikely to find a community anyway, even if they were not LLM-generated

        I really don't want to join a commons where something I make might be "tolerated in practice" based on a given moderator's vibe. Which I suppose is the message I was meant to receive from the issue that passed the vote.

        • imtringued7 minutes ago
          "Side projects with little resource usage"

          Wow so they banned literally everything?

      • whateveracct2 hours ago
        wow so codeberg is goated?
        • Cider9986an hour ago
          No, you want to be able to host whatever code, not kicked off based on whatever the hate train is on to today.
          • whateveracctan hour ago
            i'm not an idiot. i can just a git repo in a variety of ways. it's just a bunch of text.
      • mbreese3 hours ago
        That's a controversial stance. The first statement of not using codeberg hosted projects to train LLMs makes sense. But to outright ban LLM coded projects seems just silly. If the problem is that users have too many vibe coded projects, then limiting the number of projects seems like a more reasonable stance. To completely ban vibe coded projects just limits the number of users that will use them. I get that this is being spun as an effort to save resources, but this is a pretty blunt way to accomplish this. And a great way to alienate a lot of potential users.

        It's their service and they can choose what they want to host. Maybe they don't see themselves as competing with Github and Gitlab and so they are happy serving the users they have. But to me this does not seem to be a great growth strategy.

        • axusan hour ago
          I think you're right, quotas have been around as long as multi-user systems.

          Their argument was economic, an economic solution would be good:

          "It seems like many ‘vibe coders’ don't realize that they don't actually have a community around them. They build projects as if they had, and spend resources accordingly. We see projects having a lot of code activity, heavy CI/CD testing, frequent and large release binaries. Sometimes, it feels like the amount of supported platforms exceeds the amount of actual users.

          To us, it seems ridiculous to see projects with a single developer and virtually no users consuming as much or even more resources than some of the largest community projects on Codeberg, which operate frugal with CI/CD and storage resources. We do not believe it is reasonable for Codeberg to invest our precious donation money into hosting of large ghost projects"

          Ultimately, democracy is a respectable form of government and the group is free to change their mind later.

        • throw494040403 minutes ago
          Silly is how it is handled and communicated. I want clear rules, not a rant that electricity is expensive!

          I have bunch of projects and sites there for a year+, most of them are llm generated.

          What is a grace period for existing projects to move? What are criteria for deciding what is "vibe coded"? If i get banned, is the repo just deleted, or made readonly...

          Codeberg had outage for last 5 days, where some repos could not be commited into. I expected post mortem analysis, not this debate!

        • rtpg20 minutes ago
          > To completely ban vibe coded projects just limits the number of users that will use them.

          here lies the fundamental misunderstanding by many people in this thread.

          Is the objective of Codeberg to host as many projects as possible on its own server? I do not believe so!

          The question then becomes "what is Codeberg's objectives?"

          It's not to become the world's largest code forge instance! It's to build a set of FOSS tools for FOSS software development. Look at [0], for example, which lists alternatives.

          But perhaps most importantly, the FOSS tooling can be self hosted, right? There's still a notion of freedom there.

          [0] https://docs.codeberg.org/getting-started/what-is-codeberg/#...

      • conartist63 hours ago
        I'm... unsure how to feel. On one hand I have the utmost sympathy for the idea of pushing people away from disposable software and towards collaboration. On the other hand this will definitely devolve into name calling and vigilantism. On the third hand, Github is already drowning in slop. It takes up huuuuge amounts of resources and delivers a tiiiiny amount of value to the platform per line of slop code
        • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
          > On the other hand this will definitely devolve into name calling and vigilantism.

          No doubt. Just look at Lobsters.

          A quality filter would have been more effective.

          • conartist63 hours ago
            You have to understand that this isn't about everyone being altruistic towards everyone else. When the industry declared that AI would replace humans, even perhaps make every single person worthless, they guaranteed beyond all doubt that the vitriol would reach at least these levels. There's no point in extending kindness to people whose stated goal is your extinction. At that point what's left is war.
            • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
              Then war it is. Like I told the fine people of Lobsters, they're going to take out a lot of innocent people as collateral damage during their crusade. I've already soft quit that site, and there goes Codeberg as well. What can you do?
              • whilenot-dev31 minutes ago
                I'm not following. Your last comment on Lobsters[0] was 4 days ago, that's not soft quitting. And even if it is, how is soft quitting war?

                [0]: https://lobste.rs/~matheusmoreira

              • conartist63 hours ago
                I don't disagree, but it is not within my power to do anything to change that. There exists no person who could call off the backlash to the AI movement
          • fodkodraszan hour ago
            Lobsters is the definition of a toxic community. Here at least you can create a throwaway account to have a controversial opinion. There you need vested invited, and get banned if you post some uncomfortable truth. Been there, done that. Same goes for mastodon.social.
      • echelon3 hours ago
        They obviously care more about social performance than code.

        They just tanked my interest in ever checking them out.

    • kurante4 hours ago
      I strongly disagree: I think this is a perfectly acceptable action. No project is entitled to host their project there, nor is any project compelled to do so, so I don't see why there is any harm in having this instance of Forgejo moderate itself as it sees fit. They have no moral requirement to support all kinds of software.

      If you disagree with their beliefs, you are free to host your own instance or find a code forge that better aligns with your beliefs. That is the beauty of free software!

      • kleene_op7 minutes ago
        This sends a really bad signal.

        Why would I host my project there, taking the risk that they changed their mind overnight and declare my project inappropriate because of XYZ?

      • cushan hour ago
        It’s bad because it’s subjective. It’s a liability to host anything there now - their opinion of your product category could shift tomorrow… oh wait that already happened
        • avaer8 minutes ago
          Exactly. It's not so much that there are rules, it's that the rules are decided by random popularity vibes. It's not clear what vibes they will be smoking tomorrow.

          The least they could do as a nonprofit is make users aware that a core tenet of the service is to promote/ban whatever content the community voting decides any given day, and hopefully what ideology they are following.

          Otherwise any serious person would to well to stay away from Codeberg; you don't know if your project will be in the community's sights in the next vote.

        • omnimus7 minutes ago
          At the same time now it's quite clear what is codeber for. Hosting active free software projects that are not vibecoded.

          It's not a dump to put anything you have stored in git.

      • p-e-w3 hours ago
        > If you disagree with their beliefs, you are free to host your own instance or find a code forge that better aligns with your beliefs.

        Sure, but Codeberg has presented itself as a hoster for Free Software projects, not for Free Software projects that align with some vaguely defined ideology. If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

        The ban on “vibecoded” projects is effectively an invitation to start witch hunts. This is a terrible idea if you want to build a community.

        • kurante3 hours ago
          > Sure, but Codeberg has presented itself as a hoster for Free Software projects, not for Free Software projects that align with some vaguely defined ideology. If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

          Well, they kinda do? Go on the main page, it's the second line of text: "Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides services to free and open-source projects...". They're community-led, and this was a community decision.

          > If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them

          What do you want to see then? They've made a blog post about vibecoded with detailed explanations [1], a public banner mentioning they no longer allow cryptocurrency projects and restricting LLM content and with a link to the changelog with the differences in terms of use [2].

          Should hackernews also mention that allowed content is dependent on its moderators with vaguely defined ideologies?

          [1]: https://blog.codeberg.org/protecting-our-floss-commons-from-... [2]: https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/org/compare/17bdb39b0c1ecd0e42...

          • p-e-w2 hours ago
            > Should hackernews also mention that allowed content is dependent on its moderators with vaguely defined ideologies?

            Absolutely. And it would be even better if the moderators each wrote a short summary that’s an honest attempt to describe what their individual ideologies are.

            I respect institutions that clearly state their biases much more than those that pretend they have none.

            • kurante6 minutes ago
              Fair enough! But surely you would allow them to update their summary on what their ideologies are, right? People change, after all. And people should know when those ideologies change too.

              We should also make sure people read all the blurbs before they join a website. Maybe we should call it the Terms of Service? ;)

              Despite most websites having nothing but legalese in there, Codeberg's is pretty short and human readable by comparison. I know most people have been desensitized to it, but I haven't heard of any better way of coveying them at an institutional level.

        • matheusmoreira2 hours ago
          > The ban on “vibecoded” projects is effectively an invitation to start witch hunts.

          It's a guarantee. Those witch hunts will happen now that those opposed to LLMs have official approval.

        • rvz3 hours ago
          > If they are now the latter, they should start by clearly stating that ideology so users can make an informed decision on whether Codeberg is the right place for them.

          So far it is now (unofficially) The hoster of Human-made™ non-crypto™ Free Software so far it is fully legal under the jurisdiction or country it resides in (Germany).

          • hparadiz2 hours ago
            That's a lie anyway. I know for a fact that major open source projects have AI contributions merged into main. At this point pretty much all the ones that take over 5 minutes to compile have some LLM generated code.
      • colordropsan hour ago
        You are arguing with a strawman. No one said anyone is entitled to host there. They are saying it's just a bad policy because it makes it an unreliable place to host projects when you don't know what will be banned next. You are "strongly disagreeing" with something other than what the OP said.
      • hbbio3 hours ago
        Another beauty of free software is they took the project from gitea and gogs before that.
      • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
        > No project is entitled to host their project there

        So tiresome. This is going to lead to an even more fragmented free and open source ecosystem. GitHub is the default choice because it has huge network effects. Codeberg just opted out of those.

        • kurante3 hours ago
          Did they, though? Do we have numbers on how many cryptocurrency projects were removed from Codeberg because of this, since GitHub is the default choice? Or are you suggesting that there is going to be a significant split because of this?

          I agree that this is probably going to cause some fragmentation, but I'm not convinced that it will do so in a meaningful matter or at the scale at which it is problematic to the free and open source ecosystem.

          For what it's worth, Forgejo is working on federation[1], which might address your networking effect concerns?

          [1]: https://forgejo.org/2026-05-monthly-report/#federation

          • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
            > Or are you suggesting that there is going to be a significant split because of this?

            There are going to be many splits. Cryptocurrencies. Vibecoding. Whatever else offends them.

            Whether it will be "significant" or not, remains to be seen. I won't be sticking around to witness it.

        • krapp3 hours ago
          Good. That's how FOSS is supposed to work.

          Codeberg isn't competing against Github for market share, it serves a specific demographic with a specific ideology. Anyone is welcome to use any other host they want for their crypto and AI projects, with whatever policies align with their preferences. Or make your own with blackjack and hookers.

          There shouldn't even be "default choices" or "huge network effects" in FOSS anyway. That's just another form of centralization.

    • comeonbro3 hours ago
      I can't recall which, but I'm certain that I've encountered and probably used Codeberg-hosted things, and from that had gathered a vague positive impression of them.

      I guess what I'm worried about is that the proprietors of those nice projects I liked (and others) might have chosen Codeberg out of a reasonable set of common assumptions that it was a place for free-as-in-freedom, as they and clearly many of us have always understood it, which were not contradicted by how Codeberg presented themselves up-front. And have now had this sprung on them, after they'd already established themselves there, and might now be facing a miserable and sapping moral dilemma, or even be directly doubting the security of their home there.

    • raincole4 hours ago
      My rule of thumb: just use the most mainstream options unless I have a very, very strong reason to do otherwise. The mainstream options will screw you, but the niche options will screw you in totally unexpected ways.
      • birksherty4 hours ago
        Are these comments written buy bots? It's the mainstream ones that have been screwing people without any recovery options, there were many horrifying top posts in hn itself in last few years.
      • Marsymarsan hour ago
        That may work for software but boy does that sound like a milquetoast life if applied to everything.
      • duxup3 hours ago
        “Nobody ever got fired buying IBM.”
      • tbrownaw3 hours ago
        A nice thing about Git is that you can trivially push to a new upstream any time you need.
        • tehbeard28 minutes ago
          Yes yes yes, we know. Git is decentralised, you can just trivially push* anywhere!

          * - the code. Just the code. only the code. Nothing but the code. You don't need the issues, the roadmap, the ACL of which human can do what, the API access keys for third parties, the artifact repos. Just. The. Code.

          Somewhat arsey in my tone? Yeah. But having done two large scale (100+ repos) forge migrations of our company's client projects (SVN -> github, then later on github -> bitbucket) and seeing people completely ignore the metadata surrounding the code that isn't as easy to "just push" anywhere, somewhat justified.

    • isodev3 hours ago
      > But inflicting a subjective moral judgement on an entire category of software

      Apple does the same with the App Store btw, are you “staying very far away from” smartphones because of that censorship?

    • mfru32 minutes ago
      They held an internal discussion amongst members and decided democratically which stance to take.
    • TZubirian hour ago
      I don't know what the actual stance is, and what counts as cryptocurrency or why the decision was made.

      But I tried clicking on the link cited in the OP that would explain this ( https://forum.codeberg.org/d/82-taking-a-stance-against-cryp... ) and it got 404.

      And getting a 404 on a host that's supposed to host code, now that is completely unacceptable and makes you want to stay far away indeed.

    • holgerschurigan hour ago
      > There are some levels of censorship

      Except that here is no censorship to be seen.

      A censor was a state/government official that approved material before it was allowed to be published. It started to become a thing after the printing press revolutionized publishing. You had it in monarchies but also republics (e.g. during Napoleons oppressive regime over europe). And even in recent time, e.g. in socialist 1) countries they had embedded "party secretairs" that checked stuff.

      So, censorship as a) from the government and b) checked before publishing to the general public.

      In capitalism or --- what we actually usually have --- a social market economy a company is free to get into contracts or not. So if some company say "I don't want to do a contract with people creating XYZ apps" ... than that's not censorship. It's not from the government and no check process before the publishing process happens. It is just freedom ... the freedom of the company in this case.

      In some countries the freedom to engage into a contract or not is sometimes limited, e.g. if some service is very important (like electric power, water, banking). But a source code hosting site won't qualify for this.

      Executing your own freedom isn't censorship. If e.g. Fox News decides to not broadcast 1:1 a statement of the CCP made ... then this isn't censorship.

      But if a US republican regime says "You can't publish info on homosexuality in school books" and some government entity checks these books ... than that's censorship.

      1) I mean real socialist ex-countries like GDR or USSR, not what some US people that never heard about "means of production" call socialist, like FRG

    • super2563 hours ago
      Fun fact: They deliberately chose to host in the EU because they were concerned that malicious actors could abuse the DMCA by filing fraudulent copyright claims to take down legitimate software repositories.

      I guess software that doesn't fit their world view is illegitimate now.

      Here is a talk from one of their presidium members about GitHub DMCA takedowns: https://vimeo.com/246282607?fl=pl&fe=sh

  • tkel2 minutes ago
    I see this as a higher evolution of simpler community tech projects, which are incapable of tackling or comprehending these things as a group. And so simpler projects will often neglect or reject taking them up altogether, using various restricting justifications. But the truth is this is a step for the community towards actually thinking about how you exist in the world that you live in and having a say in it. Congratulations.
  • firloop5 hours ago
    They are not the first code hosting service to do so. sourcehut banned cryptocurrency in 2022:

    https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-10-31-tos-update-cryptocurre...

    https://man.sr.ht/terms.md#permissible-use

    Mostly positive HN discussion when this happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33403780

    • DaSHacka4 hours ago
      The difference is sourcehut has like 50 users
      • mbreese3 hours ago
        And has a very vocal/opinionated owner. You know what you're getting with Sourcehut. (And I don't mean that in a bad way).

        Rightly or wrongly, Codeberg had a different feel. For a while it felt like it was trying to be a refuge from Github. But then again, maybe that was projecting something on them that they didn't intend.

        • iamnothere3 hours ago
          Once again, the stability of a BDFL is vindicated.

          Democracy works ok in extremely complex systems like giant distros—Debian’s governance is slow but functional—but it seems to need guardrails around the process. (From what I can tell, an excruciating process is the best guardrail. Glacially slow decision-making means that mobs burn themselves out before they get to voting.)

          • tkel38 minutes ago
            "Democracy works OK when I agree with the result"
            • andai16 minutes ago
              I think there is a slight difference between open source and government there. With open source you can just leave and pick another one. Or start your own.

              Well I suppose that's also technically true of governments...

  • danpalmer5 hours ago
    Why? Banning abuse is fine, and disliking Cryptocurrency projects at a moral level is fine, but running a coffee hosting service and putting your moral judgements on projects like this just seems childish and unserious.

    I'm also apparently banned from reading the article, despite having no previous usage of Codeberg or any history with the project, so I can't even see their reasoning.

    • jjmarr4 hours ago
      In the words of the person who announced the ban, when moderating a discussion on it 8 months prior:[1]

      > > Dear Codeberg, please push out and ban these political fighters.

      > This is not a neutral space, Codeberg is political. If you disagree with someone, be constructive and don't call them merely political and think that's a reason for the discussion to stop.

      the maintainers of Codeberg do not believe that they are a "coffee hosting service" that neutrally hosts code from a variety of perspectives. Their view is that hosting code is a political act and this is backed by the donations funding Codeberg's operation.

      [1] https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/2184#issuecom...

      • andai9 minutes ago
        I'm trying to find more information about their politics. But all I found was their bylaws and a gay flag. Maybe I'm supposed to read between the lines?
      • duxup3 hours ago
        How do you know what the politics will be next?

        They banned vibe coded projects too… goodness knows how they think they can determine / enforce that.

        • tkel2 hours ago
          Well, if you're not part of the community, what do you care?

          Are you saying you are opposed to this on the grounds that anything could happen in the future? That doesn't really make sense. Yes, anything could happen. Yes, people change. That is true in nearly all contexts.

          If you're asking in good faith, you participate in the community democratically and try to influence others. Just like normal.

          There was a vote held for this decision, it was 306-154.

        • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
          > goodness knows how they think they can determine that

          Asking people to define that nearly got me kicked out of lobsters.

          These people don't want to have to define it. Ironically, they're going to enforce their rules based on vibes. Vibewritten rules, vibenforced.

        • tbrownaw3 hours ago
          > How do you know what the politics will be next?

          That's the neat part, you don't.

          (Or, well, you could pay attention to the individual humans involved?)

      • Forgeties794 hours ago
        Honestly I respect it
        • gruez4 hours ago
          I can't. What happened to pluralism?
          • jrflowers3 hours ago
            Pluralism is when strangers are forced to host my code for free. The idea of somebody else putting their time and money into something and then not giving it to me is philosophically worrisome
          • 4 hours ago
            undefined
      • altmanaltman4 hours ago
        The whole "codeberg is political" is the scary bit. Whose politics? How is it decided by members what exact politics to represent? Do some members have undue influence on exerting their particular politics?

        Sure ban Cryptocurrency projects whatever, its your platform. But calling a code hosting service "political" and acting like its the Galatic Senate is just wrong priorities. It is hard to take something serious like that if they just say "hey we are political whether you like it or not" without spending susbtantial amount of time ensuring its clean, transparent and good politics not a bunch of sith lords jerking each other off.

        • pretendgeneer3 hours ago
          I think you're misunderstanding "codeberg is political".

          Everything is political, FOSS is political, GitHub is also political.

          When people say "We're not political", or "That's not political". What they're actually saying is that it's within my own politics.

          • tbrownaw3 hours ago
            No, there's a big difference between "net effects are not guaranteed to be perfectly neutral" and "I am going to intentionally put my thumb on the scale".

            The position that everything is political so therefore opinions are mandatory intentionally conflates these things.

            • Forgeties793 hours ago
              You’re the one who seems to be conflating things - everything is political =/= opinions are mandatory.
              • tbrownaw3 hours ago
                The comment I was replying to said

                > When people say "We're not political", or "That's not political". What they're actually saying is that it's within my own politics.

                That assertion is incorrect. Said incorrect assertion is derived from the conflation I called out.

          • pluralmonad12 minutes ago
            This seems like a useless definition of political.
          • causalmodels3 hours ago
            My issue with this is not that codeberg and its members want to uphold a certain set of political beliefs. Any private organization is free to do that. It's that they haven't defined the rule that's supposed to encode those beliefs.

            As written, the rule is a non-exhaustive example of "content that harms codeberg's reputation". Someone asked in the pr whether "cryptocurrency-related" is defined anywhere and it merged without an answer. The responses to wording concerns was essentially they will figure it out later. Moves like this don't fill me with confidence.

            • tkel2 hours ago
              You're still not understanding the point. It's not about an organization being "private" or "public" (what does "private" even mean?). Everything is political. When you try and cleave society into things that are and aren't political, what you are doing is creating a normative set of things that aren't allowed to be challenged, on the basis of your claim that they aren't political, obscuring/obfuscating their actual underlying politics, and everything else is pushed outside of it. It is an attempt to create strict boundaries around the limits of discussion and action, which is itself a political act!
              • fluoridationan hour ago
                >When you try and cleave society into things that are and aren't political, what you are doing is creating a normative set of things that aren't allowed to be challenged, on the basis of your claim that they aren't political

                What are you talking about? Whether something is allowed to be challenged has nothing to do with whether it's political. Actually, what even is not allowed to be challenged? I struggle to come up with a single example.

                • tkel17 minutes ago
                  Yes, in communities that try to claim that certain things are "political" and certain things are "not political", "banning cryptocurrency" could be rejected on the basis that it is "political". The point is that saying something like "we don't do politics" is absurd. There is always an underlying politics, even if it has been normalized or obfuscated, repressed or unexamined. Reread my above comment.
          • 3 hours ago
            undefined
          • bigstrat2003an hour ago
            No dude. Most things are not, in fact, political. When I enjoy a meal, that isn't political. When I hang out with my family and friends, that isn't political. When I sit down to read a nice book with a cup of cocoa, that isn't political.

            The notion that "everything is political" is an indicator that someone has an extremely toxic relationship with politics. Basically you're projecting your unhealthy level of political engagement onto everyone else, and insisting that we all have that manner of thinking (but are just denying it to score political points). Well that isn't true, and for your own sake I encourage you to stop that. You'll be much happier when you stop making life about politics.

            • andor3 minutes ago
              > No dude. Most things are not, in fact, political. When I enjoy a meal, that isn't political. When I hang out with my family and friends, that isn't political. When I sit down to read a nice book with a cup of cocoa, that isn't political.

              What do you eat and what do you refuse to eat? Which restaurants would you go to or not? Which companies do you buy from and why/why not?

              Who do you meet with and who do you avoid? What do you talk about and which topics do you avoid?

              Where is your cocoa grown, which brand do you buy and who ends up making money on your purchase?

            • wolvesechoesan hour ago
              But the moment you step into social realm it becomes political, as Mr. Aristotle said.
              • fluoridationan hour ago
                What do you mean? If I talk to a friend about stargazing that's political? If a group of people meet up to play a game of cards that's political?
                • notrealyme1233 minutes ago
                  So I am very pedantic here, but yes it "can" be seen as political. You made the decision that your free time is more important than working and generating value.

                  I understand "everything is political" more in a sense that we as a society have the burden to shape our own rules, and saying "I only live in the society, but ignore the burden of making rules" is not really possible. In that case you actively decide to let someone else decide for you.

          • altmanaltman3 hours ago
            No I understand that. But the point I am making is saying that is much stronger than saying "our policy says we won't host crypto projects going forward". The latter is fine, any service provider can set terms as they fit within the law. But if you claim you are highly political, you must invite further questions into it.

            How does Codeberg handle the diverse mix of politics within it and manage its influences? If we give the organization a character by calling it political, we create an obligation to explain further.

            Overall, again I feel this is a self-own to project idealogue this hard since you flavor it in a specific way that is not inclusive.

            • overfeed3 hours ago
              > How does Codeberg handle the diverse mix of politics within it and manage its influence

              They don't have to.

              > Overall, again I feel this is a self-own to project idealogue this hard since you flavor it in a specific way that is not inclusive.

              D.E.I. is out right now. Fortunately, Codeberg helpfully funds Forgejo, so all the non-eligible projects can benefit from self-hosting.

        • jjmarr3 hours ago
          It's the politics of the paid membership of the Codeberg non-profit that funds the whole operation. They vote in yearly meetings.
          • altmanaltman3 hours ago
            I don't understand how the two are related, though. Voting yearly as a community does not make things "political" if the issues are not politically challenged themselves. For example, if a group of people get together and decide "hey we want to watch 10 movies this year" that in itself is not a political action. It's a governance action. But if they say, "Hey, let's watch these 10 movies but not watch 1 because we all think it is wrong to capitalize on bananas," that is a political action. In the first one, your individual politics do not matter for consensus but in the second one, it does and as a whole you need to take a stance on a subjective political matter as an organization. And if you take a stance as an organization, you must also accept the consequences of not being impartial which they don't seem to do. "It is political but the details of how/why/what votes are decided, how we think of politics, how it influences our worldwide, our basic ethical code etc are all unknown. BUT IT IS POLITICAL so buzz off." is not a good stance in my opinion, especially for a version control tool.
    • mbac327684 hours ago
      GitHub is the worst place to host your code. Except for all of the other places.
      • DaSHacka4 hours ago
        Well, GitHub seems unlikely to randomly ban your project if it fits within an entire category of services some admin arbitrarily decided they don't like.

        I know which one I'll be sticking with.

      • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
        Yeah. Looks like it's either GitHub or self-hosted from now on. At least GitHub has a Sponsors thing. Not that I'm getting much out of it.
      • hackermanai4 hours ago
        So it seems.
      • OtomotO4 hours ago
        My self hosted gitforge disagrees.
      • gmerc4 hours ago
        Evidence disagrees.
    • JumpCrisscross4 hours ago
      > Why?

      The impetus makes sense. Crypto is a hive of scams. It makes sense for honest people to want safeguards between their names and those folks.

      The problem is this seems to have been implemented with zero attention to detail.

      • danpalmer3 hours ago
        It's the lack of attention to detail that bugs me. It's just bad policy making. Writing good policies that encourage the right behaviour and discourage the wrong behaviour, policies that promote a good culture, are HARD.

        Saying "no crypto" has a wide range of impact, from pushing away crypto projects, to pushing away businesses who see it as an overreach, to pushing away free speech advocates.

    • lopatin4 hours ago
      I guess that brings up the question of why do people use Codeberg in the first place. From what I understand, it's a decision based on values right rather than cost, functionality, or convenience. Well here you go, more values, enjoy!
      • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
        I used it for a while because I write free software and Codeberg was aligned with that. I went back to GitHub because I couldn't get their CIs to work. Now that they banned "heavy LLM usage" I won't be going back there I guess.
    • TZubirian hour ago
      What's a coffee hosting service?
    • hackinthebochs4 hours ago
      I'm also banned from the site for some reason despite never having been there before. Though I suspect my IP is on someone's naughty list for some reason seeing as I get far more captchas on the internet than I feel I should be getting.
    • avaer5 hours ago
      [flagged]
    • weakened_malloc5 hours ago
      They also want to ban 'AI slop' - I'd love to see how they draw the lines on that one.
      • firloop5 hours ago
        [flagged]
        • cute_boi4 hours ago
          And it’s easy to detect slop that sucks up infrastructure resources just by looking at commit rates. For example, Peter Steinberger made 271,281 commits. No wonder GitHub goes down regularly because of the increase in slop activity.
        • nighteous4 hours ago
          [dead]
    • burnt-resistor4 hours ago
      Policing what can and can't be hosted is the opposite of freedom, it's tyranny.
      • danielheath4 hours ago
        Equating someone not wanting you on their website with tyranny sure is a take.

        You’re welcome to host it at your own venue. Or , I guess, to keep whining that you’re not being given free services by someone who dislikes your work.

    • vitalyan81844 hours ago
      because it's a code hosting equivalent of all those Mastodons with 50 users.

      >Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort

      in the current year, that's a massive red flag.

  • tapoxi4 hours ago
    I don't like crypto but this is poor reasoning, hastily implemented, and given very little time for discussion. There does not seem to be any concrete plan for notifying impacted projects or giving them a roadmap to migrate.

    This is unprofessional and severely harms their credibility. It's not what was done but how they did it, and I don't doubt that subsequent policy changes can and will be implemented in the same manner unless it's addressed.

    • b40d-48b2-979e4 hours ago
      [flagged]
      • tapoxi4 hours ago
        It's not about crypto, its about process. Compare this action to one by Debian or Wikipedia where there's a formal proposal, time for written pros and cons with convincing arguments for each side, and a meeting where the vote is held and impact to stakeholders is discussed.

        You can't make large changes like this without undermining your viability as stable infrastructure.

        • cyberax4 hours ago
          What "process"?

          It's a simple rule: "no cryptocurrency projects".

          • DaSHacka4 hours ago
            Obviously the 'process' is how you arrive at the rule.

            If it was just one guy who arbitrarily decided as such, that's not much of a 'process' and is exactly what GP was calling out.

            • cyberax3 hours ago
              No. The process was handled as usual: a proposal was made, and people voted. Overwhelmingly to ban crypto.
        • birksherty4 hours ago
          Too many scammers in crypto. It's a good decision. Cryptos and scammers can host their own.
      • iamnothere4 hours ago
        This attitude is toxic and will drive off other projects that aren’t associated with crypto. Once you have to factor in political risk with your source hosting, other alternatives become more appealing.

        At this point any project that’s even vaguely controversial ought to be looking at fully decentralized solutions like Radicle.

        • b40d-48b2-979e3 hours ago
          It's easy: don't be a scammer.
          • iamnothere3 hours ago
            “Don’t be a scammer”

            “Don’t be an AI bro”

            “Don’t be a Russian”

            “Don’t be a fascist”

            “Don’t be an antisemite”

            “Don’t be a (insert boogeyman here)”

            “Don’t be a sympathizer”

            “Don’t be an enemy of the state”

            These words are manipulations, and they will eventually catch up with you.

            • Cider99862 hours ago
              "Don't be a pirate"

              Agreed. No way I will ever use Codeberg from now on.

      • Mistletoe4 hours ago
        You don’t think Satoshi Nakamoto had credibility or professionalism? It’s not fair to lump the bad seeds in with the good. Imagine if I said the US Dollar was a scam because drug cartels or AI companies use it.
        • tired-turtle4 hours ago
          That comparison to USD strikes me as disingenuous.

          Currency is a measure of social trust; it allows social contributions to be measured in a fungible unit. Cryptocurrencies erase this concept of social trust under the purported claim that anonymous transfer of “money” is good for society, forgetting why humans created currency in the first place. Anonymity abets money laundering, illicit drug trade, human trafficking/slavery, and CSAM, along with a raft of other antisocial behaviors.

          Yes, you can do all of the above with USD, but you’ll have to put a lot more effort into doing so. Hence, it is fair to lump the bad in with the good for crypto (IMO) because it’s unclear how the benefits of crypto outweigh the antisocial behavior it enables. What has society gained in return?

          • bit-anarchist4 hours ago
            You have it backwards, most cryptocurrencies transactions are, at best, pseudononymous, where, by contrast, cash transactions are anonymous by default.

            > What has society gained in return?

            A currency technology that doesn't rely on central authority, slavery nor imperialism to exist.

            • tired-turtle4 hours ago
              I wrote USD, not cash. Most transactions in USD are electronic, not physical, so it’s a little unclear what point you’re trying to make.
              • bit-anarchist3 hours ago
                USD includes cash. In fact, cash is the preferred payment method for criminal things, contending with Monero, so complaining about its inclusion is certainly something.

                Going even further, cryptcurrencies, being distrusted ledgers, still fulfill the ability to test for someone "social trust" within a transaction, anonymous or not. Also, it's not like we, as the whole society, have access to your transaction history at all times with USD (which we do with Bitcoin, funnily enough).

                • hparadiz2 hours ago
                  Anyone who lives in a country with high inflation and unstable monetary policy can now use crypto to store wealth. Calling crypto inherently bad is pure first world privilege.
        • 4 hours ago
          undefined
      • nyanmatt4 hours ago
        So what, then? Disallow code that isn't deemed credible or professional by what metric? This whole thing is getting too political. I just want to write open-source software and let the users decide its worth.
      • nighteous4 hours ago
        [dead]
  • PeterStuer8 minutes ago
    Even though I do not host on Codeberg, but I do run my own Forgejo, and have no particular interest in Cryptocurrency projects, I consider this a serious red flag as to me it indicates an activist tendency, for lack of a better word, that I do not want from an IT infrastructure provider.
  • Communitivity2 hours ago
    Time to move off of Codeberg. They provide a service, that's it. I don't want drama from my service providers, and censorship incurs drama. I think some censorship is needed (hate speech, CP), but I do not want projects deleted because someone running the service doesn't like how I make them, or what they are for. They have the right to do that, but I also have the right to vote with my feet and go elsewhere, and I'm doing that. LLMs assisting coding has it's place, crypto has its place, both have been overhyped and so we're now getting a rubberband effect as people express hatred of these things based on the hype - not on their legitimate purposes.
    • omnimus3 minutes ago
      Were you paying for Codeberg?
  • trentor4 hours ago
    As with the AI ban this was a community decision done by a majority vote. It seems that most people commenting or writing articles in the last few days don't have a Codeberg account or never visit the forum.
    • comeonbro4 hours ago
      "the community" being some tiny subset of busybodies out of an OOMs-larger body of users that don't want to be bothered?

      Real question, I don't know anything about Codeberg or its community.

      • alloyed4 hours ago
        iirc, it's a consumer co-op. So think of it as a vote of all users willing to pay for the membership to the service, who (correspondingly) are more likely to be power users/"activist" in the "activist investor" sense.

        This can be contrasted with a private company, which will often have a "activist investor", the actual owner!

        • iamnothere4 hours ago
          Given that the actual number of paying users is probably low, it sounds like it would be relatively cheap to disrupt policy for someone with deep pockets.
        • masafej5363 hours ago
          this is a failure mode of consumer co-op that never occured to me. I thought the idea was bullet proof.
          • 3 hours ago
            undefined
          • lmz3 hours ago
            How is this a failure mode? Sounds like a good idea to me to let the members decide who they want in the club. Just wish this could also be done for national borders.
      • trentor4 hours ago
        Codeberg is a community steered project. If participating isn't something you're interested in, it's probably not the right fit for you. There are other Forgejo hosts (you could even be one yourself) where you can be the king of your own castle.
      • sergiotapia4 hours ago
        This sounds like a very dumb decision to you and I and most, but see you don't use codeberg. I don't use codeberg.

        So it's totally fine to poke fun, and totally fine for them to do whatever they want. We aren't part of that community!

        • 3 hours ago
          undefined
    • Lerc4 hours ago
      I think their own community can make their own rules. My only thought in doing so the description of what they represent would then be subject to those rules.

      They state "The mission of Codeberg e.V. is to build and maintain a free collaboration platform for creating, archiving, and preserving code and to document its development process."

      It seems like they might now need to elaborate that they mean "free as in beer".

    • ashton3143 hours ago
      I have an account and I donate regularly. I was not made aware a vote was happening.
      • TheChaplainan hour ago
        You need to specifically register as an active member to get voting rights.
      • matheusmoreira2 hours ago
        I wasn't made aware of any votes either.
        • juliangmpan hour ago
          Are you two only donating or are you members of the e.V.? Because I got the invitation to the assembly and 9 separate emails for each of the polls.
          • matheusmoreiraan hour ago
            I don't get it. Wasn't it supposed to be a user led platform?

            Judging by your comment, looks like it's actually led by paying users, or whatever it is that these "members of the e.V." are.

      • kajman2 hours ago
        Are you a voting member?
    • teravor3 hours ago
      putting aside the saying that goes something like "51% of the animal population votes to eat the other 49%", it takes a special kind of person to be both aware of such a vote happening and also care to participate in it.

      codeberg has outed themselves as an unserious undertaking. they will not be known for anything else now.

      • dizhn2 hours ago
        "Democracy is a sheep and a wolf deciding what's for dinner"
    • cushan hour ago
      What does it take to get a vote? Could there be some sabotage here?
      • juliangmpan hour ago
        e.V. members get to send in proposals which are voted on in the (yearly) general assembly, this was one such vote. So everyone who voted is known by their full name and address (a legal requirement for an e.V. in Germany). There is no sabotage here.
  • fishgoesblub5 hours ago
    Let this be a reminder to never trust any service be it one ran by a billion dollar company, to one ran by volunteers. You will be eventually screwed over. Make backup plans, and self-host whatever you can so nothing can be taken from you. For Git forges, I personally recommend Gitea[1], or Forgejo[2] (a Gitea fork by Codeberg)

    [1]: https://about.gitea.com/ [2]: https://forgejo.org/

    • tbrownaw4 hours ago
      Self-hosting based on an external project is still a dependency on Someone Else to keep it up to date, unless you have both the time and skill to take over maintenance of that project.
    • matheusmoreira3 hours ago
      Yeah. Buying my own domain and migrating my email to it is one of the best things I've ever done. Setting up wireguard into my LAN permanently changed the way I used computers. Looks like it's time to get myself a VPS and just start hosting even more stuff.

      Sovereign personal infrastructure is amazing. Highly recommended. Dealing with the government's rules and their politics is obnoxious enough. I'm starting to really lose patience with all of these communities.

    • iamnothere4 hours ago
      Radicle provides self-hosting with decentralized mirrors for both added availability and DDoS resistance.

      A Tor-hosted mirror provides extra protection against attacks on DNS or your domain name, and some additional DDoS protection.

    • 4 hours ago
      undefined
    • ivan8884 hours ago
      It’s probably not too important to choose a service that you think you can trust fully, because that trust might be broken at some point. But having an identifier that can be swapped to different backends, so people can find you again when the host inevitability changes, is a stronger strategy. I think the importance of owning domain names will increase, and using those as the canonical identifier of a project will give it more permanence. The procedures for seizure and censorship with domain names are better established and understood.
    • sanskritical5 hours ago
      there's decentralized git on Nostr:

      https://nostrapps.github.io/nostrgit/

      Your public key is your sovereign ownership of your project, and with Nostr is no longer bound to any single entity.

      • datadrivenangel4 hours ago
        GIT IS DECENTRALIZED
        • dbmikus4 hours ago
          But the identity part of git is not (unless you count pgp signing of each commit, which never took off at a large scale)

          and the git tools don't automatically propagate repo changes by default across a network

        • iamnothere4 hours ago
          Issue tracking and collaboration tools are not. (Although many small projects could get by with a todo.txt and a mailing list.)
        • jmalicki4 hours ago
          But if you just hashed all the changes and put them in Merkle tree to verify, wouldn't that make it so much better?
        • fooqux4 hours ago
          Yup, but the community you build around a project is not.
        • nighteous4 hours ago
          [dead]
      • bergie4 hours ago
        Git over Reticulum is another option. You get git, issue tracking (work documents), release management

        https://reticulum.network/manual/git.html

    • trollbridge3 hours ago
      I’m using self hosted GitLab; any reason I should check out something else?

      (I also mirror projects to public GitLab and to GitHub.)

      • Tepix2 hours ago
        The ability for others to send you pull requests without requiring an account on your gitlab instance
    • z0ltan4 hours ago
      [dead]
  • iepathos2 hours ago
    Prohibiting fraud or infrastructure abuse is one thing, but declaring entire categories of lawful software harmful to Codeberg’s reputation is another. They've ironically tanked Codeberg's reputation far more from these policy changes than any projects in that category could have possibly. After these changes, it is difficult for any business, or any project seeking stable infrastructure, to trust that its codebase won’t become unacceptable after the next member vote.
  • jjmarr4 hours ago
    In the prior words[1] of Gusted, one of the board members that announced the ban:

    > This is not a neutral space, Codeberg is political. If you disagree with someone, be constructive and don't call them merely political and think that's a reason for the discussion to stop.

    [1] https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/2184#issuecom...

    • zarzavat4 hours ago
      Pretending to run an inclusive git hosting service for FOSS and then attacking your own users because their code is the wrong type of algorithm isn't politics, it's just being an asshole.
      • tkel32 minutes ago
        Kinda seems like you're doing the exact thing the parent comment is talking about, except in addition to laundering your disagreement through the lens of "politics", you're just adding the word "asshole".
      • tbrownaw3 hours ago
        > Pretending

        Are they though? I see "We are more than just Git hosting: Our community is ..." right in the highlight box on their landing page.

      • birksherty3 hours ago
        Nope. It's not "attacking own user base". These comments are ridiculous now. It's safeguarding a open project by removing scammers and abusers that exploit it. Scammer should host their own or use github.
        • zarzavat3 hours ago
          Banning projects that haven't done anything wrong except implement algorithms that the Karen committee disagrees with is clearly an attack.

          If they want to ban scammers then why don't they just ban scammers instead of a blanket policy that bans legitimate projects as well?

      • fzeroracer3 hours ago
        Their own users voted for this.
      • ShinyLeftPad2 hours ago
        Run your own Codeberg instance with blackjack and hookers, it's open source.
        • hparadizan hour ago
          At that point I'm running gitlab. It's better anyway.
        • whateveracct2 hours ago
          i'm sure the guy you're replying to also wants to "legalize comedy"
    • p-e-w3 hours ago
      So what is Codeberg’s political stance? From which ideology does it follow that crypto projects are bad, but VPN projects are not, for example?
  • inigyou4 hours ago
    Codeberg is not a public dumping ground. It is a service offered by a non-profit with specific goals and missions.
    • avaer4 hours ago
      That's fair.

      They should probably put their political doctrines and ideologies on the home page so people can know if their projects fall into the category of undesirables before they make an account, since the list seems to be expanding.

      Otherwise it's hard to tell what will be banned next.

      • inigyou4 hours ago
        Does Google or Microsoft do that?
        • avaer4 hours ago
          Google/Microsoft offer services in exchange for money. They are not tax exempt charities purporting to do beneficial work for society to earn that status. And they don't block your usage based on your perceived ideology.
          • squigz4 hours ago
            > And they don't block your usage based on your perceived ideology.

            Oh, honey...

      • heiogalma4 hours ago
        Not really. I run a large community with a ban on AI and crypto, because those communities are usually incredibly spammy, toxic, and rude to other users (because they never cared about the community in the first place; only harvesting its users for their own gain.) "No AI/Crypto" isn't a law, its a note for grifters at the door that their code probably won't be appreciated. Whether or not this is in the "spirit of open source", as some other users suggest is an ineffective target to focus on. This is just a community trying and succeeding at its core users thriving, which tend to be anti-AI/crypto and more interesting in long term community building over harvesting group members for gain. Will this stop all AI and crypto projects? Absolutely not. But it makes it a less desirable target when your code can be removed. I don't really understand the handwringing from other members, especially considering 1. theyre not codeberg users 2. they skew positively on AI and crypto. Yall were never using codeberg, so why the concern trolling now?
        • DaSHacka3 hours ago
          Who's to say we were never going to use Codeberg? I actually had quite a favorable impression of it before now, as I know many projects that had to flee to it thanks to GitHub's terrible DMCA system and Microsoft randomly locking their accounts.
  • dbmikus4 hours ago
    Well, definitely makes me inclined to never use Codeberg for source hosting if they can just get together and decide to ban an entire category of source repo.

    It makes Codeberg seem like an unserious project.

    • overfeed2 hours ago
      Were you paying for the service?
  • JuniperMesos5 hours ago
    The fact that Codeberg has the power to do this is a good reason not to host your code on Codeberg. The fact that they have ideological commitments that make them think banning cryptocurrency projects is a good idea is a separate good reason not to host your code on Codeberg.

    Fortunately Codeberg is a relatively small player and Git forge hosting is fairly competitive and among the easiest types of online service to self-host, so the effect of this on most Git-forge-users is pretty minimal.

    • elictronic4 hours ago
      Banning cryptocurrency scams seems like a pretty good reason to use codeberg.
      • aliasxneoan hour ago
        Sounds like a good idea. Too bad that's not what went into the ToS.
    • iamnothere4 hours ago
      Exactly, I will no longer be recommending Codeberg moving forward for the same reason I don’t recommend GitHub. Political risk is a real concern for the projects I most care about.
      • heiogalma4 hours ago
        What projects do you think are too political? If you violated the GPL, and your project was taken down, how political is that? It is political to have rules on a platform and enforce them now... but only if you don't personally like the outcome. Interesting stuff.
        • iamnothere4 hours ago
          Software like Tor and I2P that allows for anonymity and circumvention of state control. Monero. Decentralized E2EE messengers. Nostr. Open source 3D printer slicers. Libreboot. Software for decoding DRM streams. GrapheneOS.
        • 2 hours ago
          undefined
    • MallocVoidstar4 hours ago
      > The fact that Codeberg has the power to do this is a good reason not to host your code on Codeberg.

      Everything other than full self-hosting has this exact power

      • JuniperMesos4 hours ago
        Yes, and people should think about this much more than they do, when it comes to more popular services that also make ideological decisions about what user content to disallow.
      • delfinom4 hours ago
        Yes, BUT there's a difference between holding the power and actually using it to enforce ideological positions.
        • unethical_ban4 hours ago
          and there's a difference between a monopolized market player doing it and a hole-in-the-wall free host.
  • pibaker4 hours ago
    I'm not personally a fan of this move or the vibe coding rule. That being said, I genuinely wonder how many people complaining about the rule are personally affected. Seems weird to me to complain about a service setting its own rules when you don't engage with it or contribute to it.
    • bel84 hours ago
      They don't have to be affected to be worried. It's how it was done and possibilities of further bans that is worrisome.

      I have small open source projects that I won't move to Codeberg ever now because I don't want to waste any mental energy pondering if I might get banned in the future.

      For example I have a stock trading backtracking strategy test tool. Will they ban anything related to fintech in the future because it is deemed evil? I don't want to have to think about that.

      Will they ban my crappy game macroing tool to automate some simple repetitive game actions because it is considered cheating or against some game ToS? I don't care and I don't want to have to care about a possible ban. It's a glorified auto clicker to prevent RSI health issues ffs.

      • squigz3 hours ago
        What exactly about "how it was done" is alarming to you?
        • hparadizan hour ago
          I might have used it in the future. Now I never will.
          • tkel44 minutes ago
            Great, nothing of value was lost. I get that you aren't used to people bending over backwards trying to try to cater to you in order to sell you something and get your money. And the kind of social power dyamics that creates. But in this scenario, a group of people deciding democratically what to do with their platform, your hypothetical future potential (mis)use of their resource is really quite meaningless.
            • hparadiz34 minutes ago
              I contribute to open source projects hosted by codeberg and have considered moving repos I control over there.

              Germans democratically elected Hitler. A vote by less than 500 randoms means less than nothing.

              • tkel20 minutes ago
                > Germans democratically elected Hitler

                This is such a tired trope and myth from people who haven't studied history

    • sneak4 hours ago
      Publishing platforms’ censorship policies affect readers because they affect discovery and decide, like a parent, what you should or should not be allowed to read.
      • pibaker2 hours ago
        Weird example. Kids don't get to choose what parents they have. Nor can they just get rid of their parents if they don't like them. There is no reason you have to use codeberg when you can choose another platform or host your own.

        I'll be more sympathetic to your view if similar rules are imposed by GitHub, given its network effect and many software ecosystems' dependency on GitHub on an infrastructural level. But codeberg is not that.

    • elictronic4 hours ago
      Crypto shills have alot of money and bots to push their agenda. Issue is the community is so toxic and scammy at this point it might be more disliked than AI slop by anyone with a pulse.
  • minimaxir5 hours ago
    • newsomix9xl4 hours ago
      Well there go my repos.
      • cmrdporcupine4 hours ago
        Yeah I pulled my projects today. I don't need some sanctimonious kid -- who was still in diapers the first time I was reading Marx -- to tell me they're Purer Than Me and get voted off the island because I touched my GPL'd projects code with a Forbidden Tool. That's the level of discourse I saw on the PR and associated Mastodon etc threads.
  • kamikazechaseran hour ago
    I was one of the commenters that was staunchly against this proposal on the original issue that was brought up 3 years ago. Imo their entire argument has always been straw man. Anyone who has spent enough time around the core Codeberg community knows how ideologically motivated their decisions are regardless of what they put out in their PR statements.

    This incident coupled with the Forgejo one (In which they twisted the whole story and made Gitea look like the biggest villain in FOSS when in fact they orchestrated the whole drama by submitting a controversial PR that many people don't know about) made me quit and keep away from their hosting.

  • abc4215 minutes ago
    I believe that they have the privilege to ban everything and everyone from their service for literally any reason they choose.

    But this (and especially the AI ban) is a big red flag.

  • skippyfish2 hours ago
    If you work for a tech company, I can practically guarantee that it bans a lot of lawful behaviors on its platforms. Paypal bans or restricts online dating, cigarettes, and firearm accessories. Youtube demonetizes swearing. Facebook prohibits the sale of bodily fluids (I don't want to know what triggered that policy) and "used cosmetics".

    If you're not interested in stuff like that when your company is doing it, but are up in arms about some other platform deciding that they don't like crypto, I think you should look in the mirror. Their reasoning is probably the same: they don't like it and don't want to put up with the task of sensibly policing the category.

  • lifthrasiir4 hours ago
    This follows what SourceHut did in 2022 [1], but I think SourceHut did much better job to announce that (as of this writing).

    [1] https://sourcehut.org/blog/2022-10-31-tos-update-cryptocurre...

    • iamnothere4 hours ago
      Yes, Drew did a much better job managing this, and his reasoning was more excusable (people were using the build system to mine crypto and eating up resources). I still don’t like it, but I get it, and at least it was handled professionally.
  • nilshauk3 hours ago
    Codeberg's paying members can off course vote on policies of their own non-profit. More power to them. You have the freedom to not use their service. There are ample alternatives.
  • _nhh42 minutes ago
    This is crazy. 1. Humans are turning energy in code too. 2. Business cannot afford "ultra-high-end-code" or dont want to. LLM's are the escape hatch for developers in those areas to increase throughput and quality (writing tests). Everything before llm's were already a burning piece of sh*t and now we actually can do smth about it.
  • aliasxneo2 hours ago
    https://blog.codeberg.org/we-stay-strong-against-hate-and-ha...

    It's not like they've been hiding their activism.

    • tkelan hour ago
      Your point is, they should do nothing about targeted hateful spam campaigns against their users? If someone starts flinging shit at your window, and you protested, I'd tell you to sit down and "quit the activism".
  • vlugorilla2 hours ago
    That's it. I'm leaving Codeberg. Feels like if European Union was turned into a code forge.
  • letmevoteplease5 hours ago
    Looks like another project that's gonna purity spiral into People's Front of Judea vs. the Judean People's Front weirdos sniping at each other.
  • Marha012 hours ago
    My code repository should host my code, not go on dubious moral crusades. Glad I stayed on Github.

    Their ban on nebulously defined vibecoded projects is even more ridiculous.

  • adithyassekhar3 hours ago
    Every open source project ends up politically opinionated because the people behind it is married to the idea of that project than what it delivers.

    Commercial ones only care about what the project brings in, often money, but that often comes because of whatever value it provides the customer.

  • zx80804 hours ago
    > The text is now as-is because it was send out for votes. Small clarifications can be made afterwards by Presidium or Board.

    Wording from a Big Politics. Is there a Codeberg Parlament? Just curious.

  • jaredcwhitean hour ago
    Fantastic! Codeberg just keeps getting better and better, properly moderating a healthy community which does not welcome the technolibertarian dystopia we've all been suffering through for far too many years now.

    I'm not surprised many here are upset. Many here don't seem to understand the outrageous harms that a totally out-of-control tech industry has been foisting upon the planet. It's time to take a stand for a better path forward.

  • natas4 hours ago
    This is a slippery slope, and I will stay away from Codeberg, because who knows what they'll ban next.
    • tkelan hour ago
      And that's a slippery slope fallacy.
      • FabCHan hour ago
        They banned all LLM assisted projects.

        It’s not a fallacy if it actually happened.

  • ninjahawk14 hours ago
    This is a battle that likely shouldn’t be handled as a war on crypto, simply change the wording of your TOS. Absolutely nuclear.
  • biznickman2 hours ago
    I didn't know of codeberg before and this is likely the last time I'll see it.

    This seems more like a marketing stunt than anything else. They previously "banned vibecoded projects".

  • Panzerschrek2 hours ago
    It's a good decision to ban cryptocurrency projects. Such a project may be mostly fine, but considering overall cryptocurrency shady reputation it's better to keep it away.

    The same is for LLM-slop projects. They have little to no value for the society and may be dangerous.

  • Heliodex5 hours ago
    I get "Access denied" when trying to access. Can anyone archive?

    Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20260723015826/https://codeberg....

    Unrelatedly, I can recommend Radicle, which hosts a growing network of crypto projects. https://radicle.dev/

  • wewewedxfgdf4 hours ago
    Vision of the future for this platform, because all overreach makes companies more hungry for more overreach.
  • innocent_name4 hours ago
    Social signaling, surprise surprise!
  • mostlyRice4 hours ago
    Seems like it's not for me, gotta move elsewhere.
  • wolvesechoesan hour ago
    Good, based. We need some pesticide.
  • bringfiregames4 hours ago
    The Onion needs to parody these recent decisions "Codeberg bans any code base hosted on Codeberg for violating ToS" lol
  • andunie5 hours ago
    Didn't they do this a while ago already?
  • OuterVale5 hours ago
    Personally this makes me glad I moved to Tangled rather than Codeberg. I don't know how this will be enforced, but I'd be scared of similar things happening in the future to something I'm working on and all the strife that could come with the sudden removal.

    For example, what would happen if they were to decide to ban Ruby On Rails projects because of DHH's fascist actions? I'm not sure I love the precedent this sets.

    • fishgoesblub5 hours ago
      Makes me wonder if all non memory safe code will be on the chopping block in the next 5 years. Will they find it morally justifiable to "protect" people from evil unsafe languages?
      • inigyou4 hours ago
        If the government can put the mayor of NYC on a list of communist Cuban terrorists (it did, yesterday) it can ban anyone from anything for any reason. Better be prepared.
    • heiogalma4 hours ago
      Not hosting a project lead by an actual racist and fascist is fine by me. I don't understand this. Can't/don't they use GitHub? (MS famously loves helping ICE, so they're perfect matches). If nobody will host a racist piece of shit and he was forced to step back, maybe the RoR community would actually be healthier. But they still have all the usual forges.

      This behavior all reads a lot like a guy going to a fundraiser for breast cancer and then getting upset that nobody is talking about type 2 diabetes. AI and Crypto engineers have a multiple huge platforms to collaborate - let people who wish to be separated from that environment of toxicity have their own too.

  • ares6234 hours ago
    This is an interesting development. I think for the forseeable future, more and more people (who run and/or own products or platforms like Codeberg) will continue to be more selective on what they accept on their platforms.

    The software we write has been increasingly shown that they are not some unassailable paragon of neutrality and mere harmless artifacts. These things are written by people with intent. Naturally the other set of people who run these platforms would have objections on hosting them.

    "Invevitability" gets thrown around these days. I guess this is the other kind of inevitability that comes from the environment we've created.

  • protocolture4 hours ago
    Probably would have been better to do this before the moral outrage had moved on to AI. Now it just seems pointless.
  • qiqitori4 hours ago
    Can we also ban Java projects? Don't really like that language.
    • a34729t4 hours ago
      from your lips to gods ear!
  • glerk4 hours ago
    Codeberg can ban whatever they want on their platform. The thing is nobody cares about codeberg, and this is probably just a publicity stunt.
    • krapp4 hours ago
      Clearly some people do care about Codeberg given how much palpitating outrage there is in this very thread.
      • glerk4 hours ago
        Yep, the outrage is the whole point of this marketing scheme.

        I’d be willing to bet there are more crypto people who never touched codeberg in this thread than genuine codeberg users.

        • gverrilla3 hours ago
          The stunt angle might make sense, but banning vibe code too kinda contradicts it.
  • ChrisArchitect4 hours ago
    Related:

    Codeberg bans vibe coded projects

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386

  • yieldcrv4 hours ago
    Who?

    > “ Codeberg is a non-profit, community-led effort that provides Git hosting and other services for free and open source projects.”

    Github still works, and the crypto ecosystem also has arweave and many others for static assets

  • globular-toast43 minutes ago
    Bitcoin was supposed to give us a way to have digital cash without bankers controlling the system for their benefit. How did we fuck this up so badly?
  • heiogalma4 hours ago
    Oh no, where ever shall the humble crypto/ai user post their code now. Codeberg was the last software forge that accepted crypto project hosting! Oh wait, sorry. Every other commonly used forge doesn't care.

    HN loves to preach democracy until a platform governs itself in a way they disagree with.

  • jrflowers3 hours ago
    It seems like the “Your organization needs to pass my personal moral purity test before I accept free hosting from it” posters aren’t really grasping how that is the opposite of a threat

    It is like “I’m not taking anything from that food bank since they clarified that they won’t be accepting or doling out rat meat” like ok buddy, you do you

  • jdw644 hours ago
    People always say they hate centralized markets, but whenever a market starts regulating to create its own distinct character, they push back.

    Honestly, I think this measure actually gives Codeberg a competitive edge in terms of code quality.

    I think we're now seeing a pattern where, under a 'free' large market, regulations are being used to create unique market identities. That's my take—it depends on what you regulate, which determines the market's character.

    Personally, I've noticed that when Codeberg announced regulations around AI code, most of the comments cheered. But when the same people talk about cryptocurrency regulations, they get angry. It seems like people just want to regulate what they don't like, not what they do.

    I won't use Codeberg myself, but I think this policy is reasonable. I've decided that what you regulate defines your market's identity.

  • add-sub-mul-div4 hours ago
    It's a shame that such a film of commercial and criminal slime surrounds big new technologies like crypto/AI that could otherwise be used for net good. But this is where we're at.
    • tbrownaw4 hours ago
      Commercial and criminal activity are not actually the same.

      Also commercial activity tends to happen when everyone involved in the activity comes out ahead, so placing it as opposed to "net good" is perhaps a bit dubious.

    • inigyou4 hours ago
      It's the whole world. It's the current zeitgeist. Everything is for money extraction and everyone is a resource whose money is to be extracted. Anyone who tries to resist will quickly be moneyless, then homeless, then foodless, then dead. Resistance is futile.
  • q8zd34 hours ago
    Oh well, that is disappointing. I was enjoying it for my own side projects. I wonder what's next on their list...
  • fzeroracer4 hours ago
    Seems fine to me. It was decided by a community vote; it's their site and their rules. The people complaining about those damn ideologicsts or whatever seem to be missing the point in that they are equally as ideological just in a different direction.

    We're just returning back to the foundations of the internet where people setup their own community area and tell you what they will and will not tolerate.

  • newsomix9xl4 hours ago
    Codeberg is a fork of gitea iirc. All the crypto Bros are free to fork and finance a crypto friendly codeberg.

    Cryptoberg or whatever.

  • rvz4 hours ago
    If you are going to ban all cryptocurrency projects, you might as well ban all AI slop projects at this point.
    • gnabgib4 hours ago
      Err Codeberg bans vibe coded projects (150 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49003386
      • rvz4 hours ago
        That makes the decision to not use Codeberg even easier for many.

        If you are after a sustainable and stable code repository to host your projects then Codeberg disqualified themselves. It goes down regularly as much as GitHub and loses to GitHub on discovery.

        Now, you can potentially lose your entire account and projects by posting a repo that can have AI with auto-complete.

        If Linus Torvalds (pro-AI) published his scuba-diving software [0] there, which there is a CLAUDE.md file in the repository, it would get banned.

        [0] https://github.com/subsurface/subsurface

        • notabotiswear2 hours ago
          It also makes choosing it easier for others. “Hosting on Codeberg is a good indicator my code is handcrafted”, or somesuch.

          I don’t want nor am I interested in arguing whether “handcrafted” is good or bad, just positing that some people would prefer it. May not be great for [i]growth[/i], but it’s not like Codeberg is a service by a megacorp aiming to corner the market (one of the reasons why everything is regressing to mediocre slop these days, but I digress).

          That Torvalds plays for the other team is irrelevant. But if we’re mentioning him, one should recall that it was ol’ swears-a-lot himself who said “fork it or just walk away” on a similar topic.

  • nixosbestos4 hours ago
    I can't believe I want to make a comment that includes the phrase "virtue signaling" but here we are. (Also, based on my CI (with codeberg.org deps), maybe they should worry about uptime...)

    Also, idgaf what codeberg does, given that HN is virtually the only centralized platforms I use by choice (after all, where else would I watch people moan about decentralized platforms while being captive, and I do mean captive, audiences to centralized, censored platforms), but it's really a choice to merge something like this and then memory-hole the first Context link.

    edit: wait, let me get this right, the justification Context was a non-public, forum, with this label?

    > WARNING: This is currently not the official place for discussions but rather a testing playground

  • cmrdporcupine4 hours ago
    This is far less controversial than their anti-AI stance which passed today.

    I have zero sympathies around crypto projects, generally. "Blockchain" feels to me like a venus fly trap that swallows distributed systems engineers and turns them into pseudo-libertarian apologists for money-laundering.

    But I pulled my project off Codeberg today because of the anti-AI positioning. Not so much because of any specifics in their very vague wording, which they've left completely open to subjective interpretation. But because of the crazy toxic discourse on Mastodon and other places around it. People making analogies between people's LLM use and non-consensual sex, and accusing people seeking clarity on what "mostly AI" means of being like "creepy guys" etc. Just beyond the bounds of reasonable discourse and also being offensively trivializing of actual rape culture concerns without even realizing it.

    I really thought I liked the codeberg community when I joined it. I'm a copyleft guy. My project is AGPL. I've been tilted pretty far over to the left my whole adult life. I liked not being on American infrastructure. It turns out I don't like these people though. Bye. I'd rather wade in slop than sanctimonious moralism.

  • awllau4 hours ago
    [dead]
  • andrewflnr3 hours ago
    [dead]
  • cyberax4 hours ago
    [flagged]
    • Crunchified4 hours ago
      Blockchain is no good?
    • inigyou4 hours ago
      You can buy drugs with it
      • cyberax4 hours ago
        Exactly my point.
        • Cider99862 hours ago
          Monero protects privacy online, a human right.
          • cyberax2 hours ago
            Very important when you pay for ransomware.
            • Cider99862 hours ago
              The vast majority of crime happens in fiat, not crypto. Monero protects human rights while fiat allows them to be taken away.

              For example, Canadian govt used banks to control peaceful protesters to deny them freedom of expression. If they used Monero they wouldn't have had their rights violated.

              • cyberaxan hour ago
                The percentage of classical fiat used for crime is negligible, when compared with the percentage of blockhain fiat used for crimes.

                Moreover, classical fiat makes steps to make crime like ransomware or kidnapping impractical. While crypto fiat works on making them easy

  • asah5 hours ago
    [flagged]
  • badatnames5 hours ago
    Alternative git hosting truly is a cottage industry of terrible ideas
    • inigyou4 hours ago
      When it's your website you can decide what goes on it. Centralised services were so last decade.
  • shikck2004 hours ago
    This is a good thing. Crypto is 95% scams, and the remaining 5% just WAY too risky for the normal-joe. Overall, crypto (bitcoin specially) is just a useless energy consuming nightmare.
    • hackinthebochs4 hours ago
      While that's true, it's unrelated to hosting code. A reliable code hosting site should be agnostic to content. Once they start making editorial decisions about what projects to host, why should anyone trust them with their project?
      • loeg4 hours ago
        I just fundamentally disagree that hosting sites should be agnostic to content.

        Should they host malware? Anything related to CSAM? Clearly it is reasonable for them to exercise some editorial control, and this is not a crazy use of that power.

        • iamnothere4 hours ago
          What about emulators? E2EE? P2P software? Software that gets used to leak state secrets? VPNs?

          Once you open the door, it’s going to be really difficult to resist political pressure in other areas. The mob is easily swayed against new targets.

          • shikck2008 minutes ago
            Why would P2P/E2EE software be banned? Makes no sense to even compare that to crypto. Its like saying we ban C because the bitcoin is written in it.

            > Software that gets used to leak state secrets?

            Thats not really a "thing". If someone uploads something of the sorts, it probably going to be taken down. VPNs follow the same rules as P2P/E2EE, and has nothing to do with crypto.

            Just look at github, they have taken down multiple repos during the years that are illegal, and/or breaks their TOS.

          • loeg3 hours ago
            Yes? Every hosting provider should be considering what they want to host. Of course it's fine for providers to take some sort of speech maximalism stance if they want to, but it is also reasonable not to.
            • iamnothere3 hours ago
              So you think Codeberg should not host projects in the categories I listed?

              Or if you think they should, should they also provide guarantees to projects that the rules will not be suddenly changed, disrupting the project and community?

              If not, and you’re a developer, why would you want to host there?

    • cute_boi4 hours ago
      The only good thing about crypto is we can send money easily to stupid countries without any hassle and crazy forex exchange. Other than that, i don't see any value in crypto.
      • shikck20035 minutes ago
        We can send normal FIAT pretty much anywhere in the world, instantly. There might be some places that are truly out-of-reach, but at the same time, crypto is probably not working there neither as a) there i literally no computers and b) no way to use the crypto. So you end up exchanging crypto for fiat, and pay a high fee in the process.
      • DaSHacka3 hours ago
        "The only good thing about crypto is using it for <entire reason crypto exists>"

        Well, sounds like it is a successful technology.

        • hparadizan hour ago
          That got a hearty laugh out of me.
      • Cider99862 hours ago
        Monero is digital cash and protects privacy, a human right.
        • shikck20015 minutes ago
          I hear this over and over. What kind of privacy are we taking about here? You mean X gives Y 100 bucks in cash privacy? Or purchasing a house where there is no paper trail, no knowledge of who is the previous/current owner and no insurance at all kind of privacy?

          Would you be happy to send your kids to a school that no one knows whos the owner, who operates it and if there is any kind of hazards and/or insurance/maintenance? Lets not even talk about how and what the teachers get paid, as its all fully private.

    • spaceman_20204 hours ago
      You can say the same for AI btw

      There’s not a whole lot of utility to filling the world with slop

  • Lerc4 hours ago
    I'm not sure how this interacts with open source principles. I think they are free to do whatever they want with their own website and indeed with open source tooling, but as a host for open source it could conceivably conflict with those principles.

    A much debated aspect of open source is that it may be used for any purpose. The JSON licence sparked much of this debate.

    More recently there has been suggestions for an ethical source movement, which advocate that source may only be used for ethical uses. I presume they must mean Good old christian, pro family, anti-terrorism, traditional values etc. the usual ten commandments stuff. Or perhaps they had something else in mind, it's unclear, but what ever it is that's the stuff that's allowed and the other stuff isn't.

    • jadar4 hours ago
      I mean that's how I personally would define ethical. But anytime someone makes a claim like that, you have to ask "by what standard." And it's usually just "me."